Eat chocolate

Cocoa likes growing alongside native trees and plants which means it is possible to grow it without clearing forests. Farming it this way preserves vital wildlife habitats but it also means the farmers get more money as the shade from the other trees and rich soil creates superior cocoa beans.

No doubt about it.

We’re part of a team which has been working to protect the Gola Rainforest in Sierra Leone for more than 30 years. The National Park is the largest remaining fragment of the Upper Guinean Tropical Rainforest and is a real wildlife hotspot, with 300 types of bird, forest elephants, chimpanzees, and elusive pygmy hippos.

But in the last 20 years more than 2.3 million hectares of surrounding rainforest has been lost to farming. We wanted to help protect the forest and its wildlife while supporting those communities who live close by.

We learnt from and worked with local communities and farmers to come up with a way of growing cocoa in harmony with the surrounding forests. It’s working, with nearly 2,000 farmers (men and women) now working in co-operatives to manage their cocoa production and divide the profits between them.

It’s also working for nature. Surveys show the forested cocoa farms have a similar number of birds to those found in the National Park.

And that chocolate is also helping the planet. Rainforests play a critical role in the fight against climate change. The Gola Rainforest programme aims to conserve nearly 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2015-19 by keeping it both locked in the forest and soil, adding more as the forest grows.

Sure thing! We work with Cornish chocolate maker, Chocolarder, which slow roasts the beans to create both a dark and a milk bar, with naturally rich and fudgy flavours. Both are palm oil free. All profits from the sales are reinvested back into the Gola Rainforest Cocoa Forest and help protect Sierra Leone’s threatened wildlife.